THE THIRD BROCADE

THE RED DRAGON STIRS THE SEA

This chapter, following the format of the previous two, begins with my translation of the instructions, commentary, and correct method that were included in the Kao Lin engraving. Following the original text are Li Ching-yun’s commentary and my comments, and finally my instructions for practicing the Third Brocade.

The Original Text

The Red Dragon stirs up the saliva.

The Red Dragon is the tongue, which moves in a circle inside the mouth, teeth, jaws, and the cheeks, first to the right and then to the left. This produces saliva for swallowing.

Rouse and rinse [the mouth with] the saliva thirty-six times.

Until it swells into one mouthful.

Evenly fill the mouth with Divine Water;

Each mouthful is divided into three parts and swallowed.

After rinsing [the mouth with] the saliva, divide it into three equal parts.

Imitate the sound of ku ku when swallowing.

When the dragon moves, the tiger flees.

The saliva represents the dragon and the breath the tiger. Move the tongue left and right along the roof of the mouth thirty-six times. Rinse thirty-six times. Divide the saliva into thirds in the mouth and, just as if it were a solid substance, gulp each portion down. Afterward this procedure will activate the fire.

The correct method: The tongue stirs about the mouth and teeth, both to the left and right, until the cheeks are full of saliva; rinse and then swallow.

Author’s Comments

Activating the fire is the result of swallowing the saliva. It is through this swallowing that the heat (qi in the lungs, solar plexus, and heart region) is directed downward to the lower abdomen. To do the swallowing properly, you should visualize and sense the saliva as it moves downward.

In all the original texts, the attached illustration to this brocade shows the hands and arms held upward and over the head, with the hands formed into fists. More contemporary texts have eliminated this deportment altogether. The original text itself makes no mention of this other than by illustration. However, other Taoist sources reveal that this deportment not only aids in sinking the qi into the lower abdomen but also raises the shen as well.

Li Ching-yun’s Commentary

Red Dragon is a name for the tongue. The tongue is the tool by which the saliva is produced and therefore functions as the source of good health. It is said that a bright red tongue is a sign of good health. Here it functions as the collector and stimulator of saliva.

The correct procedure is to begin by placing the tongue against the inside of the left cheek. Move the tongue from the left cheek in a rolling motion up and over to the right cheek, passing over the front of the upper gums and teeth, and then continue down in front of the lower gums and teeth back up to the left cheek again. Make eighteen complete (clockwise) revolutions of the tongue around the inside of the mouth. Next, with the tongue positioned on the right cheek, make the opposite movements towards the left cheek. Make eighteen complete (counterclockwise) revolutions of the tongue around the inside of the mouth.

If, during this procedure, you should become unsettled or disturbed, you should pause to compose yourself and get rid of any anxiety; otherwise the source of your good health may well become damaged.

Rouse and rinse means to gather the saliva in the mouth. The qi is stimulated during the in and out motions of rinsing. Thirty-six is the number of revolutions. This procedure in effect causes the circulation and stimulation of qi so that it can penetrate deeply.

The method is to use the tongue to stir up and produce saliva and to accumulate it into a single batch. Then, press it forward as if to spit it out. When it reaches the tip of the tongue, this is the completion of issuing the saliva; when reaching the base of the tongue, this is the end of withdrawing the saliva. One out (issuing) and one in (withdrawing) is counted as one full cycle. When having completed thirty-six cycles, stop.

Author’s Comments

Rinse means to suck the saliva back and forth from the base of the tongue to its tip.

The term Divine Water refers to the saliva. With the mouth full of saliva after having performed rousing and rinsing thirty-six times, the saliva becomes a uniform mixture and spreads evenly throughout the mouth. At this time, the breath and qi will also be uniformly spread throughout the body.

Author’s Comments

The more experienced and proficient you become with this gathering and swallowing of the saliva, the thicker and more substantial the saliva actually becomes, both in consistency and quantity. After a time, it will feel more solid in the mouth and take on a whiter color, rather than the watery, clear quality that is indicative of bad health. As the saliva becomes more substantial and white, so too will the sexual secretions. In Taoism, saliva and sexual secretions are very closely related as health-giving fluids and components of the elixir of immortality.

The Divine Water is the saliva. In Taoism, the saliva is also referred to as jade juice; Buddhists call it sweet dew. Unlike Westerners, who consider saliva an unwanted and useless bodily secretion, the Eastern mystic has, since antiquity, embraced it as both an aid and a medicine for health and spiritual cultivation. However, saliva is divine only if swallowed correctly. To correctly swallow the saliva, the yogin stretches his neck slightly upward and directs the saliva downward, by visualization, into the Function meridian, thus bringing the fire (breath) down into the lower abdomen. After a long period of correct practice, swallowing saliva will cause a vibration and slight sound when the saliva drops into the lower abdomen, creating an internal sound like thunder rumbling off in the distance or like a drop of water falling into an empty bucket. Ingesting the saliva also serves as a preliminary discipline of a higher yogic practice of ingesting qi. It is said that if you succeed in swallowing the saliva correctly, you are well on the way to immortality.

Each mouthful means the mouthful of saliva. Three parts and swallowed means that the mouthful of saliva is divided into three equal parts and swallowed down successively. It is completely unintentional that this is analogous to the Three Powers.

Author’s Comments

Ku ku (phonetically “guu guu”) is the sound akin to that produced when gargling or when water goes down a drain. The characters also represent a compound meaning the sound of waves.

The Three Powers (san tsai) are the three powers of heaven, earth, and man.

The terms dragon and tiger are metaphors for yang and yin energy, respectively. There is no truth to the idea that there is actually a dragon or tiger residing in the body. The dragon referred to in the dragon moves is the spirit within you; the tiger in the tiger flees is the qi within you.

Now, just as when collecting the saliva, rousing and rinsing, mixing and dividing, and swallowing down, the results are a fullness of spirit and qi, harmony of the yin and yang energies, and your entire being united peacefully like heaven and earth.

Author’s Comments

When the dragon moves, the tiger flees. This particular line of the text has been entirely deleted by most modern commentators. Why is hard to guess. The dragon and tiger are symbols for many Taoist concepts crucial to understanding these eight exercises. For example, the dragon represents yang, spirit, and water (saliva). The tiger represents yin, breath, and fire. Hence, yang and yin, spirit and energy qi, water and fire, and the saliva and breath are all regulated, balanced, and in harmony with each other. In Eight Diagram philosophy, the dragon is symbolized as k’an (symbol for water) and the tiger as li (fire). In every Taoist work, you’ll find pairs such as dragon and tiger, lead and mercury, yin and yang, green and yellow, and so on, to describe the idea of fire and water. There are almost as many of these dialectic associations as there are schools of Taoism.

What you must understand about these terms is that they are not meant to be taken literally. The idea in Chinese philosophy concerning the Five Elements (wu hsing: metal, wood, fire, water, and earth) is that each element (hsing) has an activity or quality associated with it.

So, this line of text reveals that, if the saliva (dragon) is stimulated (moved) from above [the mouth] through swallowing, the fire (tiger), as a matter of course, will enter into the lower abdomen (naturally flees). In other words, the breath (qi or fire), which in most people is congested in the lungs, will, by means of swallowing the saliva, be taken into the lower abdomen. On another level, the text is relating that the saliva leads the breath, the yang leads the yin, the shen (spirit) leads the qi (energy), or the dragon leads the tiger.

Author’s Instructions

• Close the eyes and grasp the hands firmly using the Dragon and Tiger fists.
• When proficient, perform tortoise breathing with the Four Activities, swallowing the breath nine times with the sound of ku ku.
• The Red Dragon stirs up the saliva seventy-two times, rousing first to the left thirty-six times and then to the right; when proficient, add simultaneous eyeball rotation.
• Rinse the saliva for thirty-six cycles.
• Divide the Divine Water into three equal parts, swallowing three times with the sound of ku ku. When proficient, combine with the Four Activities.

Rousing the saliva to the left

Sitting cross-legged, grasp the hands firmly using the Dragon and Tiger fists. Place the tongue on the roof of the mouth and begin rotating the tongue toward the left cheek, then to the lower jaw, up to the right cheek, and then back to the palate. Circle the tongue smoothly in this manner thirty-six times, first to the left and then thirty-six times to the right. Breathe naturally while circling with the tongue. This is rousing.

When you get the knack of circling with the tongue in this manner, proceed to include simultaneous eyeball rotation as well, with the eyelids closed. When the tongue is on the roof of the mouth, the eyes gaze inward and up; they circle down toward the cheek along with the tongue, gazing downward when the tongue moves to the lower jaw, and so on.

Rousing the saliva to the right

The mouth should now contain a quantity of saliva. Place the tongue against the teeth and begin sucking the saliva back and forth along the length of the tongue. Do so thirty-six times (each back-and-forth motion is one cycle) while maintaining natural breathing. This is rinsing.

With the mouth full of saliva, bring the hands up over the head, holding them in fists with the palms facing front and the elbows slightly bent. Place the tongue against the roof of the mouth, divide off one-third of the saliva, and swallow with a gulping action (making the sound guu guu). When swallowing, stretch the neck up a little and tilt the head back just slightly (this is to ensure the saliva’s proper descent down the esophagus and the descent of the qi down the Function meridian channel). Divide off another third of the saliva and again gulp it down in the same manner. Finally, gulp the last third down.

When gulping, listen each time to the “guu guu” sound the gulping creates. This is swallowing.

For true tortoise breathing, before beginning to produce the saliva one should do as instructed in the Huang ti nei ching:

Breathe deeply seven times, each time “stopping the breath” qi, extending the neck, and swallowing the breath. As one does so, it should be as if one is swallowing something hard. Having done this seven times, move the tongue around and swallow the saliva produced several times.

It is advised to get the knack of swallowing just saliva first and later adding the swallowing of air. Regardless of whether you are swallowing air or saliva, eventually you should be applying the Four Activities to this exercise. As discussed in the beginning of Part 2, the Four Activities help you to learn how to guide qi through the Lesser Heavenly Circuit, which is explained in Part 3.

For this exercise, apply the Four Activities each time before you swallow. That is, with the fists raised above the head, draw in the anus, roll the eyes upward and back to visualize the Jade Pillow cavity, form the magpie bridge with the tongue, and slowly inhale and stop the breath for twelve heartbeats. While holding the breath, send the qi up from the Returning Yin cavity and into the Hundred Gatherings cavity. After swallowing and exhaling, send the qi down to the lower abdomen.

At first you will have to imagine this process, but eventually, through continuous practice, you will be able to sense the qi move up the back and down the front of the body.

With this exercise the qi and ching are swallowed (sunk) into the lower abdomen.

Applying the Four Activities